The Blogging from A to Z Challenge is to post everyday (except Sunday) in the month of April 2020 starting with the letter A and going all the way to Z. My theme is...
Ancestor Occupations
SEAMSTRESS
My great Aunt Bessie (Elizabeth Susanna Gay, née King) was an accomplished seamstress. Her stitches were so small, so straight, so precisely placed that today you would think they were made by machine. She made beautiful smocked dresses for me when I was little.
During the Second World War jobs were rationed. Bessie's husband was too ill to work and to be able to get a job Bessie had to prove to the government that she was the only adult working in the household. Bessie was able to get work as the resident seamstress at the Montreal Children's Hospital on Guy Street.
Bessie's seamstress talents were used mostly for fashioning garments for burn victims. She would measure the child then design and sew by hand special garments for them. Many of the children she sewed for got burned by sticking a bobby pin into an electrical socket. That made her very vigilant at home when children were around.
I would imagine it is not a job you can do for many years without it affecting you. When she left the hospital after the war Bessie went to work as buyer and decorator for the Ritz Carlton Hotel in downtown Montreal.
I had a great-aunt who was a seamstress! :) I always envied her skill. I can't really sew...
ReplyDeleteThe Multicolored Diary
I don’t so much like to sew for myself, tho I have. I had four daughters so I made Clothes for them and LOTS of Barbie clothes... by machine, I’m too impatient to sew by hand.
DeleteMy mother too was a dressmaker, apprenticed at the age of 14 to a local tailor. She began sewing on a treadle machine because the house then did not have electricity. Mum was still making her own clothes in her 80s. I too had a smocked dress with puff sleeves, like your great aunt Bessie. Unfortunately I did not inherit Mum’s talent!
ReplyDeleteThat’s so young to be working full time, eh?
DeleteI would do my sewing at night, but our place was small and I hated that I had to pack everything up so the kids wouldn’t get into it. I envied my sister-in-law her sewing room (with a lock) that was off the playroom so she could watch the kids.
Women so often wound up dressmaking but it was a good career and skill to fall back on if their husband died, got sick, or left them. My mum smocked the baptismal frock we used for our daughters.
ReplyDeleteWhat a treasure to hand down.
DeleteMy mom’s next baby died and she had my dad throw all baby things away, including my dresses!
I meant to say how sad it would have been for her, seeing those little ones who had been burnt. She would have had to be so particular with her seams etc so they didn’t scratch.
ReplyDeleteYes, and I don’t know what material they used.
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